Historical Genesis: Evolution (S07, E03)

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast, we are going through an eight-episode series looking at whether

Genesis should be taken as history or mainly as fiction.

In this seventh season of the podcast, we will look at different aspects of

what is known as primeval history, the first 11 chapters of Genesis,

and discover if the Bible's account of the origins of the human race can be trusted.

Today, we dive into the topic of evolution and look at what it means and what

the scientific evidence for this theory is.

Thanks for joining us today.

So evolution is a scientific theory about not necessarily the origins of humanity,

although we're going to get into that,

but it is the process by which a lot of people believe we have evolved into

the nature that we have around us.

And so evolution is the view that non-living substance gave rise to the first living material,

which subsequently reproduced and diversified to produce all extinct and extant or existing organisms.

And the idea here is that it

is a process by which simple organisms

can evolve and grow into more complex organisms because of the mutations or

what Darwin called the natural selection of those greater or more complex organisms.

To put it another way, it is the eminent processes within nature have produced

humans and all else that exists.

There is no involvement by any divine person either at the beginning or during the process.

All that is needed according to naturalistic evolution is atoms in motion.

A combination of atoms, motion, time, and chance, has fashioned what we currently have.

No attempt is made to account for these givens.

They simply are the basis of everything else.

And again, that reiterates that it is something that takes time,

And that all, according to evolutionary theory.

Needs are atoms and simple cellular organisms that are adapting and changing

to the environment that's around them.

And they are creating more complex organisms so that we have human beings,

we have lions and tigers, we have the blue whale in the oceans, we have plant life.

All of these things came from simple, one-celled organisms that just changed

and evolved over time to become what we have today.

So all living matter, plants and animals, have evolved from just simpler organisms.

And the way that Darwin describes this, at least from what I understand, is the idea of a tree.

The trunk of the tree is that first simple cell that came into existence.

And every branch that comes off of that tree has been adapted from that one

cell so that all of what he would call the tree of life has come from this one trunk,

which is representative of a simple cell.

A guy by the name of Wayne Grudem in Systematic Theology talks about this tree in this way.

In modern Darwinian evolutionary theory,

the history of the development of life began when a mix of chemicals present

on the earth spontaneously produced a very simple, probably one-celled life form.

This living cell reproduced itself, and eventually there were some mutations

or differences in the new cells produced.

These mutations led to the development of more complex life forms.

These are the branches that are coming off of that trunk.

A hostile environment meant that many of them would perish, but those that were

better suited to their environment would survive and multiply.

Thus, nature exercised a process of natural selection in which the differing

organisms most fitted to the environment survived.

More and more mutations eventually developed into more and more varieties of living.

So that from the very simplest organism, all the complex life forms on Earth

eventually developed through this process of mutation and natural selection.

So this idea is very simple, that the trunk of the tree is what created,

started the natural selection process.

And every branch, whether it's a plant or an animal, came off of this trunk

and it kept growing, it kept dividing.

Every branch, every twig that comes off of each of those branches is a different

organism that is trying to evolve and to survive.

That's the process here. Dr. Stephen Meyer, he says it this way.

So it, this is evolution, asserts life has arisen as the result of a slow,

gradual, and continuous process of change from that very first simple ancestor

to all the forms of life that have developed from it right up to the present.

The second main proposition that Darwin's theory asserts has to do with the

mechanism by which that continuous and gradual change occurred.

That is, Darwin's famous mechanism of natural selection acting on random variations or mutations,

which are copying errors in the genetic material, the sequence of digital characters in the DNA.

So this is getting really deep into the weeds here,

but the concept here is that a mutation, he is calling it the copying errors

because it has changed its genetic code from that single cellular organism into

a multicellular organism,

which would have to take a mutation or a copying error.

And the process by which this happens is what they describe as evolution.

It is how the scientific community believes we have life on this planet.

Jerry Coyne, professor at the University of Chicago, states this about the reasons

for believing in this theory.

So he says, the tenets of evolutionary theory are simple.

Life evolved largely under the influence of natural selection.

This evolution took a rather long time,

and species alive and dead can be organized on the basis of shared similarities

into a tree whose branching pattern implies that every pair of living species has a common ancestor.

Among genuine scientists, there is not the slightest doubt about the truth of these ideas.

The evidence for all of them is not only strong but copious,

so much so that evolution has graduated from a scientific theory to a scientific fact.

And so the concept here is that when we trace the ancestry of all living beings,

the theory is that we can trace it to one single cellular organism.

They don't really have a process by which they know or agree upon how this came

about, how this single cellular organism came about.

There, we'll get into some specifics later, but the concept is that somehow,

someway, there was a very simple organism that began to mutate,

and these copying errors actually led to more and more complex life.

Millard Erickson says this about it. Nature, rather than being thought of as

passive and an object of human activity,

is considered dynamic and the sole and sufficient cause and explanation of all that occurs.

Instead of human origin, for example, being thought of as an act of special

creation by God, biological evolution is seen as the cause of the human.

Humans are not as uniquely different from other living beings as was formerly known.

So the idea in Genesis of human beings being made in the image and likeness

of God is not relevant in evolutionary theory.

Human beings are exactly the same as bald eagles. We are exactly the same as sycamore trees.

Like we all have, are just surviving, and we are thriving according to this theory.

We don't have a special place in this universe, and nature then is elevated

to something that is dynamic and active,

whereas the things of nature are more closely related than what the Bible would lead on to.

And so this is where evolutionary theory leads.

It leads to a devaluing of humanity and a raising up of nature, as Jerry Coyne wrote.

And that article was about 10 years old. But as he wrote that,

the scientific community, according to him, was very firm in this.

And so what we need to look at is, as followers of Jesus.

Does this relate to scripture and can we mesh these two ideas if this is what

a bunch of scientists believe?

And when we get into Genesis and how God created this, I don't see how we can

mesh these two concepts because God creates things specifically.

He does not just start a single-celled organism and then back away and let things

happen. He is actively doing the creating.

So in Genesis 1 verses 11 and 12, God said,

Genesis 1:11

Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing

fruit, and which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so.

The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their

own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. So God spoke, and every single plant came into existence.

It wasn't just that, hey, we brought forth a daffodil, and then it just so happens

we get dandelions, and then we get fruit trees.

It is specifically God saying, I am creating trees.

I am creating the grasses. I am creating the flowers.

I am creating all of these things. It is not God.

Happenstance. It is completely and specifically done by God.

And this is what we see about the animal kingdom as well in Genesis 121.

It says, so God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that

moves with which the waters swarm according to their kinds and every winged

bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. He didn't put out the process and suddenly there

was an eagle and an owl and all the other birds just happened to come along.

He literally created each according to its kind.

Now, the word kind is ambiguous in the Hebrew.

It may not specifically mean species, but what I gather from it is that, all right, we have cats.

We have lots of different cats and there are tigers and lions and domesticated cats.

Like all of these are in the same family.

And so that's kind of how I see this. Not necessarily each species of cat, but cats in general.

And so that's what we see happening. God creating these things.

Specifically and intentionally.

And this is very clear in Genesis 2-7 when it talks about humanity.

Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into

his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

This is not about, oh, well, we got a human being out of this.

No, this was intentionally done, and it had God's breath inside of Adam.

It was not by happenstance.

And we get this reaffirmed even outside of Genesis, where Moses in his speech says this,

For ask now of the days that are past,

which were before you since the day that God created man on the earth,

and ask from one end of heaven to the other whether such a great thing as this

has ever happened or was ever heard.

And the part I'm pulling out of that scripture passage is that God created man.

He didn't create a process. He didn't create a single cellular organism. And hey, we got humans.

He intentionally didn't. And so I don't see how evolutionary theory can come

alongside scripture. I think they are at odds.

I do want to say one caveat here. When I'm using the term evolution here,

I'm talking about macro evolution.

And this is how one species can become a different species.

That's what I'm talking about. There is micro evolution that has been documented

and that does not contradict what the Bible is saying.

And that is just change that's happening in species.

One of the examples I saw from one of Wayne Grudem's books, he wrote about how

humans are getting taller and how he thinks that's an adaptation of humanity.

That's something that we are able to do.

Now, whether that's better nutrition or if it is really microevolution,

that's what he uses for that.

And so that's undisputed. We're not trying to combat microevolution,

which are small changes within species, but we are combating and it doesn't

fit with the biblical narrative when we talk about macroevolution.

One species suddenly adapting and becoming a different species. Yes.

So what we need to ask ourselves is, okay, is the Bible wrong?

Because it does not go against the scientific idea of evolution,

which, as you heard me read, they are very convinced of.

Because it goes against that, do we have to throw out the biblical narrative?

Is it not something from Genesis that we can take as history?

Because in my opinion, they are not compatible.

What I'm going to present here is a case against macroevolutionary biology.

There is some evidence to point to that, but from my perspective,

I'm going to show you why I don't think it's a valued theory in the scientific community.

So I'm going to start with, again, Stephen Meyer. He is someone that I just

really appreciate his work. I find him on YouTube.

He's a Christian. And this is what he talks about.

Because one of Darwin's concepts is about looking at the fossils and seeing,

all right, there's similarities here, and then there's similarities here.

And so he is saying, OK, because there are similarities, let me guess that this

is connected somehow, that they are both coming from a common ancestor before.

That's what he did. He saw it in the fossil record.

He saw it in the natural world that there were some similarities.

But when we look at the fossil record, and we have 160 years more than Darwin

did of looking at the fossil record,

there are some issues with the idea of the similarities that are in between

these species means that there's a common ancestor. So Dr.

Stephen Meyer says this But in fact,

from Darwin's time right up to the present The fossil record has posed a very

considerable challenge to the Darwinian first picture of the tree of life But

also to the idea of the creative power of the mutation and natural selection mechanism.

Because what we see in the fossil record, in particular when we are looking

at major innovations in biological form and structure,

is the abrupt appearance of such major innovations,

where in each case, those new biological forms are lacking any discernible connection

to similar forms in the lower sedimentary strata.

So you get an abrupt appearance of a new form of life, usually persisting through

the fossil record with some slight variation,

but the basic form remaining static over long periods of time and then either

the form going extinct or it persisting right up to the present.

We don't see the gradual morphing of form from one major type of organism to

another that is described by Darwin's tree of life and predicted on the basis

of the action of his mechanism of natural selection and random various mutations.

And so what Meyer is saying here is that when you look at the fossil record,

there aren't direct links that take one organism and create a new species out of it.

It just doesn't exist in the fossil record.

Yes, we see that there are similarities in certain organisms,

but that doesn't necessitate that it is about a common ancestor.

It could also be that there is a common creator that is using similar structures

and features in one creation rather than another.

And the way that he looks at this is from the sedimentary strata is what he talked about.

And that's the layers where we have organisms below the ones that are found above them.

And the ones that are below are supposed to be the ancestors because we all

come from a common ancestor.

That's what we're supposed to see. We're supposed to see direct genetic links

between one to the other.

But while there are similarities, there is no direct link in this chain.

The fossil record just doesn't show that.

Another way the fossil record combats this evolutionary theory is something

called the Cambrian Explosion.

So the Cambrian Explosion is a description of what happened in the era of the

Cambrian era of Earth's history.

And it roughly happened, according to Meyer, 520 to 530 million years ago.

And at this instant in time, in the fossil record, what we see is an explosive

growth of new organisms.

So there are just a massive amount of new plants, new animals, etc.

That are happening at this time. And this should not happen if evolution was

true because it takes long, it's a slow,

long, gradual process to mutate from one organism to another.

And so the concept here, according to Stephen Meyer, of this Cambrian explosion

is where the first animal forms rose abruptly.

Quickly in the fossil record with no discernible connection to similar forms

in the lower pre-Cambrian strata.

It's really dramatic how great the, how many the new organisms are in this time.

And so some scientists just throw this away. It's just a glip on the radar,

just something that We don't understand that nature did and that they explained it that way.

But Meyer goes on to say that there were 17 such events like the Cambrian explosion

being found in the fossil record.

It just didn't happen one time. It was multiple times where a lot of new organisms

are found and there's no direct link in the sedimentary rock below them.

We just can't find it. And so it doesn't make sense that evolution did this.

So he says this about the Cambrian explosion and all of these different patterns

of this, these 17 times where they have seen this before.

The overriding pattern is one of abrupt appearances and stasis,

where the basic forms of life, once they appear,

remain static over long periods of time with slight variations on the basic theme,

but we don't see the kind of morphing from one major morphological innovation

into another that you would expect on the basis of Darwinian theory.

So the overriding pattern is simply this, that when you see organisms in rocks

over time, they are pretty much the same.

There are some nuances and that's where the micro evolution comes in,

but you don't see major jumps.

You don't see major shifts in the evolutionary period based upon the fossil record.

And so the fossil record, while some people do use it as evidence There are

gaps and holes in the evolutionary theory that, in my opinion,

are worth looking at because they just can't explain what happened in these times.

We also have the struggle with the theory of natural selection because life

would have had to begin from non-life.

Organic matter had to come from non-organic matter.

And this is a really challenging concept for the evolutionary biologists.

So Wayne Grudem says this, the spontaneous generation of even the simplest living

organism capable of independent life from inorganic materials on the earth could

not happen by random mixing of chemicals.

It requires intelligent design and craftsmanship so complex that no advanced

scientific laboratory in the world has been able to do it.

So the idea here is that we need multiple proteins to be able to form a simple cell.

And to get one protein, you have to have a very fortunate picture of all of

these elements coming together.

And the guess is like lightning or some sort of stimulus like that,

that would create this protein.

And that's only one protein and our cells need multiple of these to exist.

And so the spontaneous generation is highly unlikely.

In fact, there are evolutionary scientists who have come up with a probability

of what it would take to get just one simple cell.

And the chance is one in a one followed by 340 million zeros.

That is what the probability of getting one single cellular organism looks like by natural selection.

And from Grudem's quote earlier, over the last 160 years since Darwin made this theory.

No advanced scientific laboratory in the world has been able to do it.

There was one protein one time that they were able to create,

but it was under a highly structured regiment, and it was not out in nature,

and it was only one protein.

One protein needed out of multiple to get us a cell.

The idea of this has gone so far that some scientists see the problem in this,

but they are guessing that maybe alien life came and planted that single cell

because it just seems so unlikely that it would happen on its own.

And so those are just two of the issues that are describing why I think the

evolutionary theory is a challenge for scientists.

Obviously, they're going to have their own evidence, but I think these are two.

The fossil record and the idea of how the first cell came into being are two

really big gaps that help me to trust what the Bible says.

Stephen Meyer, again, says this, mutations degrade information.

So when you think about a mutation that's needed to perform the changes necessary

to get a different species of animals,

he's saying they only degrade information, but minds generate information.

And therefore, minds provide a better explanation for the origin of information

than the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection.

So an intelligent mind is something that it makes more sense to create what

we know today as the genetic code, DNA.

It just doesn't make sense that it would happen by natural selection.

Another comment about evolution is that from Wayne Grudem.

He says, on this matter, thousands of Christians have examined scripture again

and again in great detail.

And many have concluded that Scripture is not silent on the process by which

living organisms came into being.

Moreover, careful observation of the facts of the created universe has produced

widespread disagreement regarding theories of evolution,

both from scientists who are Christian and from a number of non-Christian scientists as well.

So on both biblical and scientific grounds, theories of evolution have been

challenged by Christians.

It is not cohesive with what Genesis says,

and there are really big gaps that

they cannot fulfill to be able to satisfactorily say, as I read earlier,

this is moved from scientific theory to scientific fact.

And so this is what we are left with.

We are left with the idea, okay, what would we then say are the reasons that we are here?

And from my perspective, there are two different ways that a Christian can answer this question.

One is by intelligent design.

Someone like Stephen Meyer, who believes in an old earth and believes in the

microevolutionary processes,

who has looked at the Precambrian explosion and seen, That looks like that could

have been when God was creating the plants and the animals in Genesis 1.

And so this is one way that followers of Christ can believe in how we got here.

So, according to William A. Dimsky.

Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the

complex, information-rich structures of biology, and that these causes are empirically detectable.

To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable

is to say there exist well-defined methods that on the basis of observational

features of the world are capable of reliably distinguishing intelligent causes

from undirect natural causes.

And so because of looking at our DNA and seeing how complicated that is,

a lot of people I have seen are relating that to the code that is in computers and writing that code.

It takes an intelligence to make these codes, and that intelligence is detectable,

and it is something that we can study.

Then we have Stephen Meyer declaring this about intelligent design.

Now, what we know from our uniform and repeated experience,

which is the basis for all scientific reasoning from the past,

is that information, especially in a digital form, always comes from an intelligent source.

Whether we're talking about a paragraph in a book or a section of software or

hieroglyphical inscription or even information embedded in a radio signal.

Whenever we see information and we trace it back to its ultimate source,

we inevitably find a mind and not a material process.

Well, if the mutation selection mechanism is not capable of generating the amount

of information necessary to build new forms of life,

then a better explanation is actually intelligent design.

Because evolutionary biology cannot explain how the mutation selection mechanism

is capable of generating the information needed to carry out our DNA.

Then the better guess as to what's happening is that there is an intelligence behind it.

So the idea here is simply that God created the earth and intelligent design

people are generally going to believe that it's an old earth,

that it is millions of years old, and that there are processes that are happening

that help us to determine when the animals appeared and all sorts of things like that.

So they're more than likely going to be old earth people.

And they take the evidence of the fossil record.

They take the evidence of the radioactive carbon dating information.

They take all of this information and they plug it in and they say,

all right, the earth is old, but it was definitely created by God.

And so they would take the days of Genesis to be eras and not 24 hour periods.

Then the other way that I think is plausible for Christians to believe where

the Bible is correct and where the earth is at at this point is young earth

creationism or something called scientific creationism.

There are a couple of organizations that believe in this, the ARC down in Kentucky,

that is an Answers in Genesis organization. and so they are a young earth creationism.

And so in this concept, it says, God produced the world and everything in it,

not by the use of any indirect means or biological mechanisms,

but by direct action and contact.

In each case or at each stage, God did not employ previously existing material.

New species did not arise as modifications of existing species,

but they were fresh starts, so to speak, specially created by God.

And the idea here is that the earth is a limited number of years old.

They would probably trace it back to no more than 20,000 years of age.

And they would believe that Noah's flood is the reason that we have the geological

features that we have today that other people are saying would take millions of years to form.

And they would also say that there's issues with the radioactive carbon dating methods.

And so they would not believe in those sorts of things.

They would believe it was less than 20,000 years old.

And they would believe that the days in Genesis are 24-hour literal periods.

Not long periods of time.

From my perspective, again, as a follower of Jesus,

and I just showed you a few examples of why I don't think that evolution holds

up when you really look at the material, but I would say as a follower of Jesus...

You would, the two camps that you could fall into would be intelligent design.

It is an old earth, but God shaped and formed everything as the Bible declares.

And that even though it is millions of years old,

those days in Genesis represented long periods of time or a young earth creationism

where those days in Genesis were 24 hour periods and the earth is not as old as the rocks. indicate.

That is, from my perspective, the reasons that we would go away from evolution

and the reasons why we would go towards the Bible,

believing it to be correct, and how we can be rational about our faith in terms

of looking at scientific evidence and coming to our own conclusions about where the earth is,

which is what I said last week is not something that is a device,

should not be a divisive issue.

It is something that you are able to believe whatever you want to believe about how old the earth is.

And you can still have a biblical frame of reference believing either of those two.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion of evolution.

As a Christian and Bible believer, I do not believe that life arose from anything outside of God.

He is the creator and originator of life in this universe.

There can be disagreements on the ways in which God created life,

but the Bible clearly states, and I believe, that life started intentionally

by God's creative and powerful word.

If you would like more information about Faith Chapel and its ministries,

please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Next week, we will look at the different views of the historic Adam and Eve

and how they fit into the biblical narrative. Have a great week.